My brother Mike has been obsessed with fishing his whole life. Whenever I mention this fact to people I tell them he's "basically a professional fisherman except he doesn't get paid to do it -- yet." You may remember him from such posts as "That's One Big Ass Fish." That said, he's going to be chronicling some of his fishing trips in the Philly area, the Dirty Jerz, or wherever his adventures take him. He may also occasionally file local fishing reports although I'm guessing these posts won't be as frequent when the fish aren't biting.
My Dad, my buddy Mike Davis and I drove down to Galena, Maryland (which is only an hour ride from Delco, PA) to do a little Striped Bass fishing on the Susquehanna Flats this past Tuesday. The Flats are an expansive area of shallow water at the mouths of the Susquehanna, Elk, and the Northeast Rivers. This is basically the upper most reaches of the Chesapeake Bay. From mid March to early May Striped Bass use these waters as staging grounds and a feeding area before and after they head up the rivers to spawn. At this time of year they are mainly feeding on two species of herring that both spawn around similar times as the Striped Bass in these very same rivers.
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At 5:30 AM we met Captain Ed Robinson who has been fishing this area
since he was a young kid. He reiterated what I had learned from reading reports
that it had been a weird year on the flats. Basically there have been
very few fish but when you catch some, they’re real big. Ed taught me
that the key to finding fish on the flats is to look for the cleanest,
warmest water you can find. Ed found it and we started throwing
poppers and soft plastics in about 8 feet of water. We had a very slow
start but maybe two hours into it I got swirled on twice before getting
nailed on a Stillwater Smackit popper but I didn’t get a hook up. To be
honest, I may have pulled before I felt anything. Which is a no-no for
popper fishing. I was a little rusty after not having striper fished
for a couple months -- or at least that’s my excuse. This was a big
fish – looked every bit of 30 pounds. That is the beauty of these
flats you can get huge fish to hit poppers and other artificials consistently.
There are very few places on the East Coast you can do this and it’s only an hour from Philly.
At this point, we were 0 for 1. We had a couple more swirls on poppers
but no takes. As the sun got brighter we switched to plastics. I was
throwing a 10 inch Bass Kandy Delight which is basically a large soft
plastic that has great action. Captain Ed told me that these had
really been producing for the Big Bass. Finally around 10:30 I felt a
tap. I second guessed setting the hook cause it was so light but I
finally set it and wham I was hooked up and off to the races. This
fish took a lot of line -- more line than any striper I had ever hooked
before – and had my adrenaline pumping! Finally I was able to turn the
fish and started working it closer to the boat. When I finally saw the
fish, I thought it was over 30lbs but didn't realize how big it really
was until we got her out of the water. We weighed her on a digital
scale and she weighed 42 lbs. My biggest striper ever!
I was psyched. We quickly took a picture and got her back into the
water. This is a catch and release fishery as many of these big
spawners represent the future of our striped bass fishery.
The rest of the day was slow. We did mark fish but didn’t have any
bites. Captain Ed managed to catch a smaller fish around 20 inches on
a plastic but that was it. At the end of the day I felt bad for my Dad
and my buddy who never had a bite but I was pretty psyched with the
trip as a whole due to my monster catch.
News
The Susquehanna flats are a very cool fishery close to Philadelphia.
If you want to give it a shot check out Captain Ed Robinson at Bonus Check Charters -
http://www.bonuscheckcharters.com/
